Why should I have a well water purification system?

When you have your own private well, you’re responsible for your own water. It’s a blessing, but it’s also a lot of extra work – testing for contaminants, regulating the chemicals you add in, and making sure it’s safe for you and your family to drink and bathe in. Because of this, you’ve probably considered adding (or upgrading) a well water purification system.

Of course, when it comes to water purification, home water distillers make it easy to take control and protect your family. But why do you need a well water purification system? And why is a water distiller your best option (even better than reverse osmosis)?

The good news? Distillation is great for removing these dangerous chemicals!

Bacteria, Protozoa, & Viruses

While drinking contaminants like lead or arsenic will hurt you over time, drinking biological contaminants can make you very sick, very quickly. This is why most municipal water treatment facilities focus on bacteria first.

How do these biological contaminants get into your water supply? One common source of bacteria and viruses is fecal matter.

If you live in a farming or ranching region, you probably already know to be on the lookout for fecal material in your well water. When farmers are spreading manure or when large amounts of livestock live nearby, it’s easy for that contamination to seep into the water supply.

Bacteria problems aren’t easily solved with filtration systems alone. Some reverse osmosis systems even encourage bacteria growth, so you have to use more chemicals to disinfect the water. Distillation, however, kills the bacteria with boiling and leaves it behind in the boiling tank before you use it.

Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) & Potential Hydrogen (pH)

Testing TDS and pH acts like a smoke detector. If it’s going off, you might’ve just burned a bit of dinner… or there might actually be a fire.

However, the bottom line is that if you have an elevated TDS reading and/or your pH isn’t near a neutral 7, then you and your family aren’t drinking pure water. There’s something in it.

If you have an elevated TDS reading and/or your pH isn’t near a neutral 7, then you and your family aren’t drinking pure water.

Of course, figuring out why your readings aren’t where you want them to be requires even more testing. It’s a lot easier when you already have a water purification system in place that corrects them for you – like a water distiller.

Local Issues

Other contaminants in your water largely depend on where you live and what’s going on around you. For example, are you surrounded by farms? Or is there an unscrupulous company dumping waste upstream? Are elements like uranium naturally occurring in your area?

What You Need To Know About Testing Well Water & Maintaining Your Well

As stated above, the EPA recommends yearly tests for total coliform bacteria, nitrates, total dissolved solids, pH levels, and local contaminants. But other than sending your water in to the lab, what do you need to do to stay safe?

Well Water Responsibilities

This is your water. Your family’s water. You are responsible for keeping it safe and finding the right well water treatment system.

Now, you probably have things you’d rather focus on than your water. The good news is – you don’t have to be an expert!

Beyond yearly testing, the National Ground Water Association says you need to:

Know key information integral to maintenance of your well system

Visually check the wellhead and its environs

Visually check other above-ground well system components and equipment

To summarize, be observant and don’t be afraid to call an expert when you need to.

Your Well Water is Constantly Changing

Why do you need to be observant? Just because you tested your well water once and the results were fine, that doesn’t mean it is going to consistently be fine.

Things like changes in the weather can impact your safety. For example, in that study in Wisconsin about fecal contamination, the researchers realized that rainfall has a big impact. “One of the things we learned in Kewaunee County is that the amount of rainfall two days previous to the time that we sampled was statistically associated with likelihood of a private well being contaminated,” Borchardt said.

Also, some contaminants are seasonal. Let’s take nitrites for an example. One study found that nitrate levels tend to spike in the summer or the winter, depending on the age of your water. If you’re only testing your well in the fall, you might miss these issues.

Additives & Byproducts

Even after you have done all of this testing, you may still have to add chemicals like chlorine to your well to ensure it’s safe to use. But sometimes these chemicals can do harm too.

The chemicals we use for disinfection often create byproducts – such as chlorate, trihalomethanes or haloacetic acids (HAA5) – that can be dangerous. Chlorate can mess up your thyroid function. Trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids are associated with bladder cancer, skin cancer, and are harmful to the development of unborn children.

Emerging Issues With Well Water

Just as water can change every day, we’re learning about new issues every day. Contaminants pop up in the news as we discover new health issues associated with the contaminants.

Here are a few issues to keep an eye on:

Glyphosate (RoundUp)

Glyphosate, which is the active ingredient in the world’s most widely used herbicide (Roundup), is also one of the most contentious of all herbicides. Because it’s one of the world’s most popular herbicides, we find glyphosate almost everywhere – in our food (including corn, wheat, and oat products) and in our water.

PFAs & PFOAs

A family of chemicals – PFAS – has been dominating contamination news lately. The New York Times calls them ‘Toxic Forever Chemicals.’ The Environmental Working Group calls them ‘health hazards.’ The EPA has established health advisories for them and made their research on them a ‘national priority.’

The use and concentration of these highly toxic fluorinated compounds are continuing to grow at an alarming rate. Studies link even very low levels of PFAs with cancer, thyroid disease, weakened childhood immunity. Experts suspect links to other diseases and health issues too.

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